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Recordings

Schumann’s songs are among the greatest musical achievements of the nineteeth century, and this is the perfect release with which to mark the composer’s 200th birthday. This marvellous collection comprises Schumann’s complete songs, presented for ...» More

'Excellent performances and recording offer superb advocacy of late songs by Schumann and, even more affecting, by Clara … This, the fourth offer ...'At a time when the multinational labels fill their booklets with gushing hype about the artists, Hyperion's documentation puts all to shame: as in hi ...» More

Why another Dichterliebe recording? Because Gerald Finley has simply one of the greatest voices of his generation, and is an artist at the peak of his powers. He brings to this noble cycle the supreme musical understanding that characterizes all his ...» More

This latest release from the multi-award-winning partnership of Gerald Finley and Julius Drake features a literary and musical form which inspired the greatest voices of German Romanticism. The foremost poets and composers of the age saw the balla ...» More

Dating from November 1840, two months after Robert and Clara were married, Der Schatzgräber, a setting of a grim morality tale by the devoutly Catholic Joseph von Eichendorff, is the most powerful and concentrated of Schumann’s ballads. The piano graphically depicts, in turn, obsessive, effortful digging (with the spade attacking the earth in a series of sforzando accents), angelic harps (in the light-filled music at ‘Die Engel Gottes sangen’) and manic, diabolical laughter as the mineshaft collapses over the hubristic digger. The angels’ music is then fleetingly recalled before the digging theme ebbs away in the postlude.

This magnificent scena has all the hallmarks of Schumann’s great song year: the text is by a famous poet, impeccably chosen, and the music fits it like a glove. On the other hand, one can scarcely imagine the song fitting in the famous Eichendorff song-cycle, Liederkreis Op 39, composed a few months earlier in May 1840. That twelve-song work is an anthology of twilight scenes, of magic and mystery in the half-light: whether it evokes the lonely traveller, the distant lover, the sound of distant horns in a forest at dusk, or the bridal of earth and heaven in moonlight, the music is of the greatest delicacy. Even the grim appearance of the Loreley in Waldesgespräch takes place at nightfall, softening the edges of the drama into something approaching fairytale. In Schumann’s sensitivity to programme-making in terms of grouping texts appropriately, even cunningly, together, we have one of the unifying factors of that marvellous work. But Liederkreis is far from representative of the complete Eichendorff. Wolf, for example, found in him a happy-go-lucky poet, a late-blossoming adventurer in the full flush of his youth and energy, basking in the Italian sunlight. It was the fact that Schumann had largely ignored that side of the poet which permitted Wolf (always sensitive to charges of lèse-majesté concerning his great antecedents) to write a whole songbook around the texts of that author; in that work there are marvellous moments of the lyrical and more private Eichendorff to be sure, but we largely experience a world of students, scholars, adventurers and serenaders.

When Schumann decided to set Der Schatzgräber he wisely kept it firmly apart from Op 39. The emotions are far too raw and ‘gothick’ for that set of songs. It is a work almost as mighty as Schubert’s great song about a gravedigger (the songs have obsessive spadework in common), Totengräbers Heimwehe, without the seraphic redemption which transfigures that masterpiece. But Eichendorff’s is by far the better poem in that it is both a specific story that can be graphically told in music, as well as a parable about greed and the dangers of allowing money to destroy all sense of proportion. The work is reminiscent of the ‘symphonic’ songs of Schubert in that it is bound together, from first to last, by a pianistic motif. In the key of G minor with a time signature of 12/8, this is a cell that lasts no more than one bar exactly (this short span gives a breathlessness to the proceedings which is perfect for the task in hand): a dotted crotchet, sforzato, is tied to a quaver (the spade hits the earth) and then the remaining eight quavers climb their way up the stave (the spade is lifted, full of earth, and the contents are thrown over the burrower’s shoulder) before the whole process is begun again with the next bar. The fact that both of the pianist’s hands engage in this work, playing an octave apart, emphasises the weight of the spade and the need to use both arms in the wielding of it. These rising scales are craggy and slightly different each time, as if each attack of the spade encounters a different clump of rock to be tackled at a new angle. The various variations of harmonic and melodic minor scales, each one reaching a higher point in the stave, and thus seeming to be a little nearer to the frantically sought goal, contain intervals as random and various as the pieces of earth frantically thrown aside. The depth of the piano writing, and the use of the pedal, as if sound were resounding in a cavernous space, also places the song in the context of the ‘Berges Tiefen’ – within the depths of the mountains.

This music is meant to betoken monumental physical effort, but it also conjures something devilish at the same time, as if man’s most bestial emotions from the muddiest of psychological swamps were being allowed to bubble up from the depths to the surface. That Schumann keeps control of the grand guignol element in this song so that it never becomes risible is another of his achievements. This is largely due to the way that the governing piano motif is dominant without being allowed to take the music over entirely – there are moments of respite. Thus we have three ominous bars of introduction as the spade thrice hits its mark but then, for the poem’s opening words the accompaniment calms down to dotted crotchets to depict the almost spectral silence of the surrounding landscape. Another three-bar burst of activity is initiated by the coarse-sounding word ‘hub’. After this, another passage of quieter dotted crotchets; a lesser composer might have been tempted to paint ‘Rastlos’ with obviously restless triplets, but Schumann makes us wait for them until the all-important (equally coarse) verb ‘grub’.

The appearance of angels is a surprise in such a poem, but it is perhaps to be expected from the deeply religious Eichendorff. In a touch of genius, Schumann converts the earthy music of excavation into etiolated exaltation. The accompaniment conserves almost the same rhythm, and triplets make their way up the stave, but it is unmistakable that the forces of good have momentarily replaced those of the darker powers: the piano dynamic, and a change of harmony (B flat seventh in its first inversion), suggest the floating and wafting of heavenly voices. That these sounds are heard by the crazed treasure-seeker himself is suggested by the way that this quiet music continues (with a crucial change of harmony from E flat major to C7 in first inversion) for ‘wie rote Augen drangen’. This suggests that he is arrogant enough to believe his quest is aided by powerful forces on high. In fact they are mourning his folly. The high Fs of the vocal line at ‘Metalle aus dem Schacht’ gleam like fool’s gold, particularly when supported by seductive seventh harmonies leading to a real breakthrough, a modulation to B flat, the relative major.

This important staging-post, the first sight of riches and marked by a pause in the music, brings none of the expected relief or happiness. Instead it triggers a furore. Until now we have heard only determination and hard work, admittedly with sinister musical overtones. But for the words ‘Und wirst doch mein!’ (where Schumann marks the music ‘Wild’) it is entirely marvellous how the powerful rise of a semitone (from B flat to C flat) on ‘mein!’ exposes the treasure-seeker in his true colours. Even if he had not been made to repeat the word three times on dotted minims (like a combination of a maniacal dictator and petulant child) we should see (and more importantly, hear) the full extent of his foolhardy, reckless greed. So powerful is the music at this point that we can almost see him foaming at the mouth.

We have moved into C flat major and thence into D flat major. The third repeated ‘mein!’ lands triumphantly on what we might take to be G flat major. But no, it is nothing of the sort. In a marvellous metaphor to depict someone who will always want more, who will never be satisfied by anything, Schumann changes the goalposts: instead of G flat major, a new key signature takes us into the enharmonic – F sharp minor. Schumann shamelessly expands the poet’s third verse (the poem is remarkably pithy – almost downbeat – when read as verse) to make the desired musical effect. The words ‘und wirst doch mein!’ which occur only once in the poem are sung no fewer than four times. The whole of this passage is one of the most energetic that the composer ever wrote in his lieder, writhing between minor-key desperation and major-key ecstasy. Various twists and turns like someone literally throwing himself at rock-face to no great final effect bring the music into D minor. As a result the following four-bar interlude is a fourth lower than the G minor music of burrowing and excavation that has begun the song.

These depths are dangerous, a stage too far into the bowels of the earth, and a step nearer hell itself. The brutality of the ensuing accident is swift and merciless, like a summary judgement ruthlessly executed. (The murder of Belshazzar at the end of Belsatzar is even more perfunctory.) Here the composer is true to the almost phlegmatic tone of Eichendorff’s poem. With the derisory word ‘Narren’ the poet at last unmasks his opinion of the song’s hero; he is no more than a fool, and his belief in his God-given right to be rich is a horrible illusion. In fact this is a mini-version of Don Giovanni being claimed by the forces of evil. With the words ‘Hohnlachen wild erschallte / Aus der verfall’nen Gruft’ a new motif is introduced in the piano, rollicking thirds which clash in contrary motion as they depict infernal laughter. This disjointed music in diminished intervals is fit for Lucifer. The angels have lost this contest for the treasure-seeker’s soul. The motif of their music (built on sevenths) mingles with that of the treasure-seeker and eventually subsumes it. The final cadence is a plagal one where hushed staccato quavers are supported by a continuing note in the bass. This tells us that what we have heard is to be taken as a serious religious lesson: so fragile is all the work of man, and so quickly destructible are all his most ardent and foolish dreams.

Here, as in the last song on this disc, is quite a different Eichendorff from the great poet of atmosphere and nature we find in the Liederkreis Op 39. It has a hearty, masculine quality which is more prevalent in Wolf’s Eichendorff Lieder, but even Wolf avoided this type of ballad. Frühlingsfahrt has a moralising overtone which touches a sanctimonious Victorian note (or the German equivalent) at its conclusion. We have the distinct impression that Schumann took the poem up for the earlier verses rather than the later, and that in 1840, the springtime of his own creativity, he found it hard to identify with the lachrymose mood of the coda. Such were the swings and roundabouts of his moody nature, however, that any poem with regret for a misspent youth was likely to strike a haunting note (cf. the concluding words of the Hans Andersen setting Der Spielmann where the poet fears that he will be overcome by madness).

With its sunny opening, this is music fit for a merry jaunt. It is not hard to believe that the Kerner setting Wanderung2 (Op 35 No 7) was written in the same month, and that Wanderlied2 from the same cycle was to follow in December, both marvellous songs brimming with the type of outdoor energy which prevented the lied from becoming entirely the province of intellectuals and philosophers. This vein of laddish music for a singing Wanderbursch – or even two of them – came relatively easily to Schumann when he was on a high. As with Schubert, striding unisons between voice and piano betoken determination and manly enterprise. The fact that this is indeed a tale about two contemporaries makes the unanimity between the vocal line and both of the pianist’s hands, one for each of the boys as it were, all the more appropriate. It is clear to the listener that they both start out on the right track. We must also salute Schumann’s sheer gift of melody: this is a marvellous and memorable tune which unfolds for the ten bars of its length with the sort of organic inevitability that is the test of the best of its kind. It is certainly good enough to be recycled exactly for the poem’s second strophe without the listener minding in the least.

The stories of the two lads now diverge. The vocal line remains the same for the third verse, but in the piano writing the lean unisons are filled out, like the expanding waistline of a one-time athlete who has settled down and is spoiled by his spouse. With mention of the lover (‘ein Liebchen’) the inner voices of the accompaniment chug contentedly in quavers; the pianist might imagine himself in the middle of Er, der herrlichste von allen from Frauenliebe und -leben. This feminisation of the texture seems somehow cosy and civilised, softening the hard edge and thrust of the earlier music. The passage about the father cradling his child (‘der wiegte gar bald ein Bübchen’) retains the dotted rhythms of the earlier verse, but adds extra quavers to the accompaniment, as if these represented the proliferation of progeny, or perhaps the weight of extra responsibilities. As far as this song is concerned, this is the least complicated of fates, and it is clear that Eichendorff, the good Catholic, regards this embracing of solid bourgeois values as the more desirable outcome.

The sea lures the second of the boys, and he succumbs to its call, as if to a Lorelei. It is unusual that the German lied inspires thoughts of the French mélodie, but in this case we are strongly reminded of a number of Fauré songs, from the earlier Les berceaux and Au cimetière to the cycle L’horizon chimérique, all of which deal poignantly with the with dangers of a life on the ocean wave. Part of Fauré’s secret was that he knew how to evoke the sea in its different moods with the most subtle accompaniments. Schumann apparently had trouble with music for this verse, initially shaping the music in suspensions of static minims the better to mirror the mysterious watery depths – as he does in the song Im Rhein from Dichterliebe. Perhaps Schumann is better at the depths of domestic rivers than the high seas. At any rate, his initial approach brought the song to a halt, an unsatisfactory musical portrait of a sailor with an active life; (the inference is that it was far too active in the wrong way). So the quaver movement is continued for the fourth and fifth verses with the proviso that the music should gradually slow up (‘Nach und nach langsamer’ is the marking). The tune, now very familiar after three verses, is reduced to the status of a pianistic shadow which moves into the cello register of the piano; here it is set as an answering phrase to a vocal line influenced by the Neapolitan sixth as a metaphor for journeying abroad and frequenting many a foreign port. The singer is given a fragment of melody (‘Dem Zweiten sangen und logen’) rather than a real tune; this is repeated (also in a lower sequence) as if it represented someone who always repeats the same mistakes without settling down. As the song becomes gradually slower, old age catches up with seafarer and his adventurous career is made to lose its speed and energy. It is not very clear what he has done so wrong to deserve the joyless fate meted out to him by the poet. Perhaps the moral is that a girl in every port is no substitute for a wife and family life.

The song’s final verse contains Eichendorff’s pious peroration. On first reading the use of the first person (‘und seh’ ich so kecke Gesellen’) may seem to be the narrative voice of the poet himself. But it is also possible that the sailor, disappointed with the outcome of his life, has taken over the story. Perhaps the hypochondriacal composer was initially attracted to the poem precisely because one of his worst fears was coming to a sad and unloved end himself – after all he knew all too well that he had suffered from syphilis as a young man, and that this might come back to haunt him. But, having written such a merry tune, he fails to rise to the challenge of depicting any real angst. Instead we have the return of the melody which is the great raison d’être of this piece; the vocal line is smoothed of some of its dotted rhythms, the bass line is cleared of fussy crotchets, and at ‘Es klingen und singen die Wellen’ magisterial semibreves underpin the gently pulsating quavers. This nautical imagery for the arrival of spring comes easily to an old salt and gives the impression of a ruefully serene summing-up schooled and tempered by experience. Only the very last section of the song (marked ‘Langsamer’) strikes a false note: an appeal to God is always a dangerous thing to set to music, particularly in piano-accompanied song where the medium seems unequal to the gravity of something which might call for an orchestra, or at least a mighty organ. The piety of a harmonium-accompanied village hymn is no real substitute. The vocal line of ‘Ach, Gott, führ’ uns liebreich zu Dir!’ (Sams avers that Schumann takes the ‘owlish solemnity’ of this section to be preaching) sinks as if fading away; the singer, as if very feeble, or very old, is made to contemplate giving up the ghost right at the bottom of his tessitura. From a composer who had already written the sublime peroration of Dichterliebe this must be counted something of a disappointment. The postlude in the bass clef is fit for the twilight of life – the very antithesis of the healthy enthusiasm with which the song had begun. The aim has been to show a whole life-cycle from young to old, with the best beginnings traduced by events and temptations; but something smug in the poem prevents real success. We are left wondering what happened to the bright young spark who married and never went abroad. Perhaps the final notes of the song would have been a touch merrier if it had been confirmed that he had died of boredom.

This is a relatively short song, but here Schumann proves himself Schubert’s equal when it comes to the composition of a ballad. It was a genre of which Carl Loewe was a master, of course, and Schumann worked hard all his life to contribute to this old and honourable tradition of vocal music-making that is a separate art from the lied. Despite all the melodic and narrative felicities of such works as Die Löwenbraut2 and Blondels Lied3, however, there is something static about Schumann’s treatment of these stories. Only the finest performances of these works succeed in sweeping us away in the manner of the young Schubert at his best (Der Taucher, Die Bürgschaft, or the Ossian ballad Die Nacht, to name but three). Abends am Strand, however, is an exception. Of course, it is a much shorter poem, but it is as jam-packed with as much incident and fantasy as any of the longer lyrics. Schumann allows his imagination and fantasy free rein and creates a convincing mini-opera staged in the mind’s eye and ear.

The performer too is given a freedom which he has to learn to handle. The marking is ‘Ruhig, nach and nach bewegter’ (‘Peacefully at first, then gradually faster’). This is all very well, but in giving the singer and pianist carte blanche one cannot help but feel that Schumann is abandoning his responsibilities. (It is not the only time in his output that such vague directions make performers cry out for greater and more detailed explication; one bitterly misses the book about the Schumann songs and their tempi which Clara Schumann, or even Brahms, might have written.) If one ‘goes with the flow’ however, reads the words carefully, and responds to the piece in the spirit of a game where the performers’ contribution is more creative than usual, the chances are the music will come alive.

And what music! In the first verse the accompaniment gently rolls its way around the bass stave like mist coming in from the surface of the water. The blue-grey depths of both twilight and sea are reflected in the long and sonorous bass notes in the left hand. These engage with the twistings and turnings of the right hand, and the two forces pull against each other like the tugging of a powerful and quietly threatening tide. This is a tessitura that would have suited a setting of Shakespeare’s Full fathom five. The sinuous piano writing, arpeggios made up of broken chords and sixths and thirds doubling back on themselves, brings to mind the opening of Mozart’s Abendempfindung which was also such a potent source of inspiration to Schubert. And mention of that composer reminds us too of Schubert’s own flowing water music in the same tessitura (and in the same original key of G major), Danksagung am Bach from Die schöne Müllerin. At ‘Abendnebel kamen und stiegen in die Höh’’ the accompaniment music accordingly climbs the stave towards the region of the treble clef while the voice remains laconically in the tessitura of speech.

The music for the second verse of the poem runs on from the first. The illumination of the lighthouse is beautifully conceived: lamps appear one by one, gathering together in a concerted chorus of light. At ‘Im Leuchturm wurden die Lichter allmählich angesteckt’ the rolling vocal line gathers strength and brilliance as it goes, taking the pianist’s right hand with it, then the left in its wake – a canon at the distance of two beats, like a back-up of more powerful beams. This gradual illumination of the song-theatre – its impressionable public comprising enthralled young Fischermädchen – is crowned by the vocal line which leads the twinkling of these various strands of light in a melismatic dance, two notes for each syllable of the text. The lighthouse reminds us of sailing-ships and those in peril on the sea. It is then that those on the beach are able to make out a ship sailing in the distance.

It is this sight which triggers the beginning of the various fantasies which make the song the extraordinary piece that it is. It is as if everyone looking out to the horizon has an insatiable curiosity as to where that ship may be going, and one outlandish theory leads to the next. It is surely here, after the crucial word ‘entdeckt’ in the poem’s second verse, that the tempo must quicken according to Schumann’s vague instructions. Vertical chords in brusque quavers – brave, hearty and suitable for the ever-upright professional sailor used to dealing with storm and shipwreck – are suddenly imposed on a musical landscape that has hitherto been painted in horizontal brush-strokes. Those gentle rocking figurations that had served for tide and sea-mist are now pressed into more hectic service to depict the movement of storm-tossed vessels on the ocean wave.

The voyage depicted in the piano under the words ‘Wir sprachen von fernen Küsten, vom Süden und vom Nord’ (fourth verse) is a miniature tour around the world (and keyboard) where the piano writing rises and plunges alarmingly with each four-note figuration. The uncomfortable conditions of the queasy ride merge imperceptibly with the cultural challenges to be faced at the end of the voyage – all those foreign places and people (‘und von den seltsamen Menschen [Heine writes ‘Völkern’] und seltsamen Sitten dort’). Here one must remember that the cynical poet is quite capable of amusing himself by playing on the fears and prejudices of the simple fisher-folk who are bewitched by his exegesis. The stormy piano interlude of five bars is a portmanteau of expression – it can be taken to be the intrepid voyage as the ship continues to thrash its way through the seas; or the ominous threat of unfriendly natives and savages; or pioneering exploration (as if Schumann imagined himself as Columbus) as the music rises bravely in ever-ascending sequences to discover a new continent.

It is the latter theory which proves the most likely. Immediately over the horizon of this interlude the fifth strophe begins in a glorious blaze of sunlight; with two unashamed and unremitting bars of B major chords in shiningly bright quavers, we find ourselves, ‘auf Flügeln des Gesanges’, on the Indian subcontinent. Schumann had already set Heine’s Die Lotosblume in February 1840 and the slow-moving harmonies of that infinitely dignified piece showed some understanding of, and feeling for, far-eastern ritual. Here he seems to have imagined some aspect of Indian worship taking place accompanied by the brightest of colours and the grandest of ceremonies – every bar a durbar. Even within a fast tempo, the harmonic progress of these ‘schöne, stille Menschen’ is stately. It is also in stark contrast to what follows.

The sixth verse, intensely insulting to the poor Lapps, is the nearest thing we find, apart from some Wolfian indiscretions, to racism in lieder. Heine, who suffered numerous anti-Semitic slights, should have known better, although he would not have understood our present-day cult of political correctness. After due apologies have been made for the outlooks of a different epoch, these words provide Schumann with vivid and memorable musical images. Wagner could have done no better for Alberich and the Nibelungs; note the distaste of ‘schmutzige Leute’ with its dismissive plunge of an octave in the vocal line. The words have the Lapps seated at the fire, but Schumann sees them scurrying around like a race of crazed dwarfs, their croaking and yelling implicit in the hectic accompaniment. The piano part, relentlessly doubling the vocal line, hounds the words ‘quäken und schrein’ (which are repeated) up to the top of the stave as if with a whip. Once there, the voice is required to sing the most extraordinary melisma that Schumann ever wrote. The second ‘schrein’ (howl), true to its meaning, is placed on a top G (in the song’s original key of G major) which then moves down in tied minims to F sharp, E and back to a semibreve F sharp. The effect of this slow-motion cadence is purposefully grotesque, the depiction of the not-so-noble savage in all his frightening crudeness. It also masterfully conveys that the narrator, out to impress the girls, has got carried away by his own audacity.

This is certainly not the reportage of an experienced traveller but the ridiculous invention of a Walter Mitty wannabe. That yelling into the night air is the high point (or low point) of the song, and it leaves its listeners in stunned silence. There is no more to be said. In any case the ship that has been the reason why the travellers’ tales were recounted in the first place has disappeared from view. It is the pianist’s tricky task to effect the transition between two sections so utterly unlike each other: the yodelling of the Lapps and the canoodling on the beach. (We may be sure that the girls have been frightened by these tales and will receive due comfort from their valiant boyfriends who have done much to stir up the fear in the first place!) In the last verse the accompaniment is cut down to mysterious quavers alternating between the hands in the bass clef. In turn even these harmonies gradually etiolate until there is nothing more than bare alternations of Gs two octaves apart. This draining away of all harmony in the music is a powerfully apt description of nightfall. That bewitching twilight hour of telling tall stories is over; now no doubt it is time for lap dances of different kinds. But the most astonishing thing is that so much has happened on these three pages of music in such a remarkably short amount of time, and that Schumann has somehow managed to make a bewitching unity out of it all.